Tuesday, 24 January 2012

Somewhat
late but still here is a list of the most interesting and informative blog posts
published last week. The "Early Modern" set includes meditations about Shakespeare’s
Coriolanus triggered by the release
of the new filmic adaptation with Ralph Fiennes and Gerald Butler. Some
historically minded posts feature Dick Wittington, Henry Howard, the marriage
of Henry VII and Yorkist Elizabeth. Furthermore there are two posts related to
cultural history, one exploring the usefulness of the experimental-speculative
divide in Early Modern natural philosophy, the other meditating about the
Italian-Hungarian cultural relationships. Digital Humanists wrote about
infographics, an educator’s vision about the near future of higher education,
about open access, and reacted to Stanley Fish’s blog post about Digital
Humanities. In the “Others” set one may read about Prezi’s new initiative. So,
again I learned much last week, so happy reading to you as well!

Early Modern Studies:

Paul
Edmondson in his “Coriolanus in Conversation” writes about Ralph
Fiennes’s Coriolanus in a highly appreciative tone. The post is accompanied by
an audio recording of a discussion led by Edmondson and Paul Prescott at the
Shakespeare Birthplace Trust this week. Both the post and the discussion
deserve attention.

Sylvia
Morris’ “Ralph Fiennes as Coriolanus: noble warrior or boy of tears?”
Is an informative post considering Fiennes in Shakespearean roles. Her last
sentence sums up the post, so I’ll paste it here: “Looking at the Shakespearean
roles Fiennes has taken during his career it’s easy to see how this one was a
part he was waiting to take, while the film also hits the mark as a
twenty-first century action movie.”

Liz
Dollimore this time pointed at a source to Shakespeare’s Coriolanus in her post entitled “Shakespeare’s Sources – Coriolanus.” She
convincingly argues that “Shakespeare’s main source for this play was Sir
Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and
Romans.” Her argument consists in putting a quotation from Plutarch next to
one in Coriolanus. The two parallel
texts really speak for each other.

David
Fallow makes a case in his “Shakespeare and the Pantomime Cat” for the claim
that though Shakespeare and Dick Whittington seemed to have shared a fate
leading from poverty to fame, neither of them followed this pattern.

Claire at The Anna Boleyn Files writes about the
circumstances of Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey’s execution. This post,
entitled “19 January 1547 – Execution of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey”
is not so much his poetic appreciation but rather a historical introduction
flavoured with a bit of poetry.

In another
post, “18 January 1486 – Marriage of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York”
Claire reveals the problematic nature of the marriage between the victor at Bosworth Field and Edward IV’s daughter. The complex procedure
involved the interplay of the Parliament, the Pope, declaring Elizabeth to be a legitimate daughter of
Edward.

Another reaction
to Stanley Fish by Geoffrey Rockwell entitled “The Digital Humanities and the Revenge of
Authority” is a meditation that does not intend to argue with or refute
Fish, but rather to change the concepts through which a meaningful discussion
may emerge. Rockwell clarifies the field with phrasing three questions that can
be the basis of further discussions. When exploring the first, he defines
Digital Humanities in a rather telling way: “I personally think the digital
humanities is a craft that brings computing practices, concepts and language to
the building of digital artifacts in the humanities.” I think this is a claim
worth pondering about.

Melissa
Terrass’ post, “Infographic: Quantifying Digital Humanities” offers a
digital infographics of Digital Humanities as a high resolution image and a
really nice printable version. Great post for Digital Humanists and for others
as well.

Monday, 16 January 2012

Last week I
found a great variety of posts in the blogosphere worth reading and meditating about. The posts
that have something to do with Early Modern England include nine post with a
wide range of fields discussed. There is, of course, Shakespeare in many
clothes: sources and some religious background to Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy.
Besides Shakespeare, we could read about Marlowe, gossiping, brothels, turnS of
the calendar year, execution, about marginalia for theatre and book historians.
Less in number but no less thought-provoking are the posts that pertain to
Digital Humanists. Stanley Fish for example continued his meditation about Digital
Humanities demonstrating distinction and much erudition—not that I am surprised
by this—in his second take on the topic. Furthermore one of my favourite topics
is discussed last week, namely a study about the academic use—or not use—of web
2.0 tools. So, again I learned much last week, so happy reading to you, as well!

Early Modern Studies:

Samuel
Thomas in his Gossip
in Early Modern England delineates the origins and uses of the word
“gossip” from its medieval beginnings up to the time when it received its
modern, mainly negative connotation. In the story we find “god-siblings” and
Margaret Cavendish, and other early 17th-century printed material
dealing with gossiping. A fascinating story, indeed.

H.M. Castor
reviews the long history of the change in the turn of the year, i.e. the shift
from March 25th to January 1st in his “Old
year, New year.” This is both an intriguing story and a learned study in
social history. It is worth reading for all.

Liz
Dollimore argues in her Shakespeare’s sources – Henry VI part 3 that
Shakespeare most of the time relied on Holinshed as a source for this play, but
sometimes he turned for other sources. She claims that Holinshed used Hall’s Union
of the Two Noble and Illustre Families as his ultimate source, sometimes even verbatim, still there
are parts in Hall which do not appear in Holinshed. One part, at least, seems
more dramatic in Hall, and consequently Shakespeare went back to Hall in this
case, i.e. in the scene when Edward IV makes a not so modest proposal to Lady
Grey.

If somebody would like to read about Hamlet’s “To be or not to be”
soliloquy, they should consult Ewan Fernie’s “Shakespearience 4: Hamlet’s Depression.” In this post they will meet Luther, the gravedigger scene, mysticism testifying
the never-ending interest in both the play and in this monologue.

If somebody
is interested in EM executions, then they—and others as well—will find “Heads Will Roll…But How Far?” at the Early
Modern News Networks rather informative. The post is about the execution of
William Laud, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, on January 10th in
1645, and locates the event within the EM ritual of executions and their
representations in newsbooks of the time.

I cannot
resist the temptation to advertise this post, “Searching for Hungarian Shakespeares” by Paul Edmondson, as it is about
a young and talented Hungarian Shakespeare scholar, Julia Paraizs a friend and colleague
of mine. The post presents her current research project, and the reason why she
spent some four months in The Shakespeare Centre.

Holger Syme in his “Well-Read Plays IV” this week meditated about annotations and marginalia in the
third quarto of Thomas Heywood’s Rape of Lucrece (1614; STC 13361a),
the Folger’s first copy of Philip Massinger’s The Duke of Milan (1623;
STC 17634), the Folger’s second copy of Massinger’s The Bond-Man (1624;
STC 17632), the Folger’s copy of the first quarto of the anonymous Edward
III (1596; STC 7501) and some other works. His claim this time in his on words is this:
“All of them [the particular copies he has written about—Zs.A.] seem to show
readers engaged in efforts to make their playtexts more readable. But, as I
hope to persuade you, making a play readable, or reader-friendly, did not
necessarily mean erasing its origins as a performance script or altering its
status from theatrical document to literary work.”

Dainty
Ballerina last week published a post, “Vill you not stay in my bosom tonight, love?,” about one of the most elegant and
famous brothels in the 17th Century, named Holland’s Leagure. In the post one may find
literary and bookish descriptions of the brothel from its contemporaries, and
also she let’s the reader peep into the underworld of 17th-century London. This is a study
that is to be read by historians of EM culture, especially because of the
detailed references section.

Adam G.
Hooks’ “Anonymous
Marlowe” explores
the facets of the creation of an authorial persona, as it happened in the case
of Christopher Marlowe. This is done through arguing that a poem, i.e. “The
Passionate Shepherd to his Love,” attributed to Marlowe could hardly have been
written by him. Hooks meticulously presents the reader the history of this
attribution. He then concludes his post with this fascinating sentence: “If
Marlowe the author was made by the posthumous publication of his works, he was
subsequently unmade as readers appropriated (and failed to attribute) his works
in the years that followed.”

Digital Humanities:

Stanley
Fish’s second note on Digital Humanities, “The
Digital Humanities and the Transcending of Mortality” discusses the theme
of Digital humanities in the matrices of single- versus multiple authorship, singe- versus multi-directional experience, institution versus outsourcing, paywall versus open access, and explores the
theological and political aspects of DH. In this discussion Fish quotes from
big fishes in the DH guild from Kathleen Fitzpatrick, through Matthew
Kirschbaum, to Mark Sample, Mark Poster and Jerome McGann. Fish ends his
meditation with “What might those contributions [of DH—Zs.A.] be? Are they
forthcoming? These are the questions I shall take up in the next column, oops,
I mean blog.” I, thus, can’t wait for the next post. Until then, however, one
may read the comment thread attached to the post that runs into 107 comments by
now.

Wednesday, 11 January 2012

Last week I
came across many an interesting post. The Early Modernists pondered about
Leonardo, Shakespeare, polar bears and Twelfth’s Night, or rather what we will.
While Digital Humanists meditated about information, still harped on Fish’s
note on DH, wrote about alternative career paths, crowd-sourcing editing, about
statistical analysis, and naturally presented much of the MLA Convention 2012
for those who could not attend it. Happy reading!

Early Modern Studies:

The Renaissance Mathematicus revealed with much erudition that ‘In the
room, the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo,’ or more precisely about
Leonardo were wrong. In his “Monday
blast from the past #10: Leonardo rides again!” he argues that Leonardo did
not revolutionize anatomy on many accounts.

Though this is not a blog, yet I cannot help but include it here. This is
a conversation, or more precisely conversations, interviews at Charlie Rose with Liev
Schreiber, James Shapiro and Kenneth Branagh about Shakespearean plays. This is
just phenomenal, it is worth watching.

Who would expect to have met white polar bears in England in the 16th century? This sounds as improbable as meeting a bear in
the Winter’s Tale coming out of and disappearing
into nothing. Improbability is, however, not impossibility, as Dainty Ballerina
argues in her “For
keeping two white bears.”

Catherine
Simpson in her post, “What You Will” reports about 16th-century
customs related to Twelfth Night, such as suspension of social order for a day,
Yule log, theatrical entertainments.

Digital Humanities:

Thomas Rogers’
interview, “Are
we on information overload?” with David Weinberger, author of Too Big to Know, is about information
overload, filtering, evolution of the nature of knowledge. The key terms
include “networked facts,” “new golden age,” “filtering forward.”

The Digital Humanities Now collected the reactions of the
blogosphere to Stanley Fish’s opinion about the programme of the 2012 MLA
Convention. Here is the link to the Editor’s
Choice collection. And here is Steve Kolowich’s take on Fish: “The
Promotion That Matters.”

Alex Reid
in his post—a
transcript of his MLA 2012 talk—takes one of his clues from Stanley Fish,
and locates digital humanities closer to rhetoric than literary studies, as he
emphasizes invention over interpretation. His fascinating conclusion is: “It
doesn’t mean that we stop making arguments, but that we approach their
composition differently. This is both an abstract philosophical project and an
applied challenge. It means asking how we create technologies that allow us to
see and compose arguments differently[…].”

Still the
MLA Convention, Brian Croxall’s “Five Questions and Three Answers about Alt-Ac” is
actually his presentation at the alt-ac panel that is shared on his blog. This
presentation is dedicated to rethinking “graduate education and not ignore
different paths for employment after the PhD.” His conclusions are elegant and
thought-provoking “More than either an object or method of study, the digital
is something that is happening to the humanities in the 21st century.” And this
is complemented with “alt-ac is something that is happening to universities.”

This is a
thoughtful and balanced paper by Laura Stevens, the editor of the Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature (Fall
2010, Volume 29, Number 2) about crowd-sourcing the process of reviewing
scholarly articles. The article can be found here.

Ted
Underwood, in his “A
brief outburst about numbers.” laments in his post about the
divide between rather old fashioned literature professors and digital
humanists, insofar as the former look down on statistical analysis. Lamentation
then occasions some meditation about numbers, interpretation of numbers and
validity. In another post, “MLA talk: just the thesis” he summarizes his two
claims in his MLA presentation. The two theses converge in a way that data
mining may create a link between “distant” and “close” reading. Interesting
posts, indeed.

The Digital Humanities Now created a collection of talks etc
of MLA 2012 entitled “EC: Round-up of AHA and MLA conferences.” There are
very interesting posts, presentations and handouts listed here, so it is worth
browsing them through.

Monday, 2 January 2012

Last week—I
reckon not surprisingly—was less productive for bloggers than other weeks.
This, however, does not mean that I did not bump into informative and
beneficial posts. The Early Modern
set presents histories in many ways: a history play and its source, book
history and reception history. The
harvest in Digital Humanities
includes a beginner’s guide to Digital Humanities, and the other posts I have
selected consider the identity of Digital Humanities, a discussion that was initiated
by an outsider to DH, but himself a big fish in literary studies. Happy reading
and a New Year!

Early Modern Studies:

Liz Dollimore’s post, “Shakespeare’s
sources – Henry VI part 1” ponders about the description of Joan D’Arc in Holinshed’s Chronicles and in Shakespeare’s play.
The conclusion to the comparison is so beautiful that I’ll quote it verbatim: “The
story told in the first person without the narrative distance of a historian
lives and breathes with the young woman’s passion and self belief. In his
borrowing Shakespeare also brings to life.”

Holger Syme in his “Well-Read Plays III” takes this time two
books and demonstrates that their respective readers read them with the eyes of
an antiquarian. First, he looks at a copy of Samuel Daniel’s Philotas (1605) owned by Sir Anthony
Benn (1570-1618). “Benn treated Daniel’s text as a work of learning, writing,
appropriately, in Latin, and referring to Horace, Juvenal, Plutarch, Seneca,
and Tacitus in his marginal notes.” Syme argues then that Benn read the work as
a text for philological investigation rather than as a tragedy. Then he moves
on to a 1605 quarto of the anonymous Famous
History of the Life and Death of Captain Thomas Stukeley owned by William
Stukeley. This volume seems to be created for studying the play with a pen, as
every left page is blank to be filled with notes. The illustration Syme brings
is a philological and historical exploration of a word filling an entire blank
verso page.

Stanley
Fish’s essay, “The
Old Order Changeth” was published in the New York Times reflecting on the 2012 MLA Convention programme. He
there gave a phenomenology of what people are interested in nowadays as far as
literary studies are concerned. When meditating about what is about or have
disappeared, and where the future lies, he commented on the forty panels
devoted to Digital Humanities, as a possible future for literary studies. “The
digital humanities is the name of the new dispensation and its prophets tell us
that if we put our faith in it, we shall be saved. But what exactly is it? And
how will its miracles be wrought?” His paper created a bit of unrest among digital
humanists in the blogoshphere.

The first
response I know of was written by Ted Underwood: “Why
digital humanities isn’t actually “the next thing in literary studies.”” He
argues that DH is not a movement that can / should save Literary Studies,
because it is “extra-disciplinary,” it is more an “opportunity” than anything
else. He goes on claiming that “DH is something more interesting than that —
intellectually less coherent, but posing a more genuine challenge to our
assumptions.”

Alex Reid
in his “literary studies' digital humanities future” reflects on Fish’s essay, too. His
central claim is that Fish’s comparison of postmodern theories and DH just does
not hold. “Where postmodernity was a direct attack on the existing traditions
of literary studies, the digital humanities isn’t even specifically about
literature. It certainly isn’t an attack on existing methods. It is more like
an alternative set of methods. It doesn't demand literary scholars change their
objects of study. Instead, DH carries on studying the conventional literary
traditions.”